Friday, December 26, 2008
Christmas Day
Christmas Day was just another day in the ‘Bode, as many of us have started calling it. Since, however, “just another day” is very different from those experienced back in the world, I thought I would try and describe what normality is over here.
My alarm clock went off at 6:05. I cannot remember why I had set it to 6:05, it seemed like a good idea at the time to give me those extra five minutes of sleep. I sat up, scratched my head, and threw the sheets and blankets off of me. It was cold, and by cold I mean 20 degrees Celsius. I crawled around on the bed, fixing the covers and making sure the mosquito net was tucked under the mattress at all the right places. I then crawled under and out of it, and my feet hit the tile floor. I quickly walked to the bathroom, and used the ladle (“bowie”) to bring up water from the reservoir. I cupped my hands, and brought the cool water to face in order to wash it. When I was done, I toweled off and began to dress. Before I took any clothes off of my rack, I went and got my mosquito bat. When I shook my clothes vigorously, three mosquitoes flew out from my shirts. I killed them with the bat, and their tiny burned corpses smelled of burning hair. While I dressed, I turned on my stove in order to boil some water. When I had finished packing for school, I took the boiled water and poured into a cup that was filled with oatmeal. Expensive, Australian made oatmeal has become my favorite breakfast of late, and I buy it at the supermarket in Siem Reap. While eating the oatmeal, I turned on the radio and listened to the Australian news. Mary Shapiro is going to be the new head of the SEC, and Rudd government is defending an unpopular environmental policy. At around 7:00, the school bell rang. I turned off the radio, picked up my bag, and headed out the door.
The school is across the street from my house, so the walk only takes a couple of minutes. The students in blue and white uniforms passed me on bicycles as I walked along, and dismounted as they entered the big blue steel gate that marks the entrance to the school. I walked through the gate, and walked along the straight path that leads to the main office building. A smiling young man separated from his friends and approached me. “Hello Teacher! How are you today” he said. “I’m fine thanks, student,” I responded. “How are you?” “Yes,” he replied in the midst of a fit of giggling. He then went off to join his friends. Confused, I simply walked on.
When I got to the main office building, the students were lining up in rows around the flagpole in front of the building. I went into the office, put down my bag, and went outside to watch the students conduct the flag ceremony. The assistant school director was already outside in front of the students, and he called them all to attention. After shouting some orders, two students prepared to raise the flag. The assistant school director began singing the Cambodian national anthem very enthusiastically. “Som punté bada,” he sang very loudly, and indicated with his fists that the students should pick up where he had left off. The students chanted the rest of the words in such a mumbled and apathetic manner that I chuckled to myself. I laugh every morning at this spectacle, and it is a highlight of my day.
I waited for my co-teacher, who came along a few minutes later. We walked to the class together after he arrived, and talked about some of the things that would happen in class that day. We waited for a few minutes outside the classroom until the students had cleaned the classroom, and then we went inside. The students rose from their seats, and remained standing until we told them that they could sit down. After taking a minute to unpack my notes and books, I went to the board and wrote out the agenda for the day. I then wrote the date on the board. “Today is Thursday December 25th, 2008.” I thought about telling the class that today was Christmas, but I decided not to.
The lesson proceeded smoothly. We did some reading, went over a few vocabulary words, stressed pronunciation, and drilled the past progressive. At around 8:50, we let the students out for a break. I went to the library and talked for a few minutes with the other teachers, who were asking me what Christmas was. They had seen something about it on the television or radio, and I explained that it was a religious holiday that was about as big a deal as Pchum Ben. They understood the analogy well enough. At around 9:05, I went over to the second class. The chapter that this class was discussing had to do with advertising, and I had brought some ads from American magazines to show them was an advertisement was.
My co-teacher and I started off the lesson in the regular manner that we always do, but around 10:00 something rather unusual happened. Two other teachers appeared in the doorway of the classroom and beckoned my co-teacher to go with them. Without hesitation, Mr. Nou turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, I am busy. Can you teach the class?” He did not give me a chance to answer, as he left with the other teachers a few seconds later. Standing in the middle of the class, I turned to the students and asked them to wait for a few moments. I went outside, and noticed that none of the other classrooms had teachers in them. The students were filing out of them, and were walking towards the shed where they park their bicycles. I went back inside the class, and proceeded to teach for the rest of the time remaining. I had the students look at the advertisements I brought in groups, and helped them figure out what their purpose was. When this was concluded, I packed up my things and dismissed the students.
As I walking out of the school, I noticed that all of the teachers were playing soccer. I learned later that the reason why all of the teachers had left their classes was because the school director had left early that day. With no boss around, they decided to abandon their classes in order to go play soccer. I sighed while I watched the teachers kick the ball around. “À la Cambodgien,” I said to myself.
I walked home in a few minutes, and upon entering my room I started boiling water for a cup of tea. I swept and cleaned my room for a little while until my host mother told me that it was time for lunch. The meal was fish soup with rice. With a spoon in my right hand and a fork in my left, I ate the meal in silence with the rest of the family. I poured a helpful of chili sauce on my bowl at one point so the dish could have some flavor. After lunch, the women cleared the dishes and I began reading a copy of the New Yorker that had been sent to my by mail. You, the reader, might think that my manners are poor for not helping the women in their tasks of cooking and cleaning, but I assure you that this is not the case. I have tried many times to help cook, clean the dishes, or some other part of the women’s housework in the kitchen, but my attempts were met with firm rebuttals. I have been shooed out of the kitchen more times than I would like to admit, and I have reluctantly accepted their custom of keeping men out of their designated chores.
After reading for a while, the father of the table came to the table with a large bowl of roasted crickets. The bugs, which are about as big as your little finger, have a taste that resembles popcorn. Altogether they are not all that bad, but I cannot eat them without thinking about what they are. I watched the father as he ate an entire bowl of the little monsters.
The rest of the day was mildly uneventful. I walked over the pagoda and chatted with the monks for a little while, stopped off in a little café to have a glass of iced coffee, and went for a bicycle ride through the countryside. The only hint that indicated that it was Christmas came from something I saw on the television later that evening. On one of the variety shows, there was a singing and dancing troupe that evoked the Christmas spirit as best as a Cambodian person can. Men, dressed in white suits and red vests, and women, in red and white corset-like outfits, were holding poms poms and dancing. They were also singing about something called “crissmah.”
That was how I spent Christmas this year. It is very hard to make a big deal about it when your in the middle of rural southeast Asia, and I’ve tried not to think about it. C’est la vie.
My alarm clock went off at 6:05. I cannot remember why I had set it to 6:05, it seemed like a good idea at the time to give me those extra five minutes of sleep. I sat up, scratched my head, and threw the sheets and blankets off of me. It was cold, and by cold I mean 20 degrees Celsius. I crawled around on the bed, fixing the covers and making sure the mosquito net was tucked under the mattress at all the right places. I then crawled under and out of it, and my feet hit the tile floor. I quickly walked to the bathroom, and used the ladle (“bowie”) to bring up water from the reservoir. I cupped my hands, and brought the cool water to face in order to wash it. When I was done, I toweled off and began to dress. Before I took any clothes off of my rack, I went and got my mosquito bat. When I shook my clothes vigorously, three mosquitoes flew out from my shirts. I killed them with the bat, and their tiny burned corpses smelled of burning hair. While I dressed, I turned on my stove in order to boil some water. When I had finished packing for school, I took the boiled water and poured into a cup that was filled with oatmeal. Expensive, Australian made oatmeal has become my favorite breakfast of late, and I buy it at the supermarket in Siem Reap. While eating the oatmeal, I turned on the radio and listened to the Australian news. Mary Shapiro is going to be the new head of the SEC, and Rudd government is defending an unpopular environmental policy. At around 7:00, the school bell rang. I turned off the radio, picked up my bag, and headed out the door.
The school is across the street from my house, so the walk only takes a couple of minutes. The students in blue and white uniforms passed me on bicycles as I walked along, and dismounted as they entered the big blue steel gate that marks the entrance to the school. I walked through the gate, and walked along the straight path that leads to the main office building. A smiling young man separated from his friends and approached me. “Hello Teacher! How are you today” he said. “I’m fine thanks, student,” I responded. “How are you?” “Yes,” he replied in the midst of a fit of giggling. He then went off to join his friends. Confused, I simply walked on.
When I got to the main office building, the students were lining up in rows around the flagpole in front of the building. I went into the office, put down my bag, and went outside to watch the students conduct the flag ceremony. The assistant school director was already outside in front of the students, and he called them all to attention. After shouting some orders, two students prepared to raise the flag. The assistant school director began singing the Cambodian national anthem very enthusiastically. “Som punté bada,” he sang very loudly, and indicated with his fists that the students should pick up where he had left off. The students chanted the rest of the words in such a mumbled and apathetic manner that I chuckled to myself. I laugh every morning at this spectacle, and it is a highlight of my day.
I waited for my co-teacher, who came along a few minutes later. We walked to the class together after he arrived, and talked about some of the things that would happen in class that day. We waited for a few minutes outside the classroom until the students had cleaned the classroom, and then we went inside. The students rose from their seats, and remained standing until we told them that they could sit down. After taking a minute to unpack my notes and books, I went to the board and wrote out the agenda for the day. I then wrote the date on the board. “Today is Thursday December 25th, 2008.” I thought about telling the class that today was Christmas, but I decided not to.
The lesson proceeded smoothly. We did some reading, went over a few vocabulary words, stressed pronunciation, and drilled the past progressive. At around 8:50, we let the students out for a break. I went to the library and talked for a few minutes with the other teachers, who were asking me what Christmas was. They had seen something about it on the television or radio, and I explained that it was a religious holiday that was about as big a deal as Pchum Ben. They understood the analogy well enough. At around 9:05, I went over to the second class. The chapter that this class was discussing had to do with advertising, and I had brought some ads from American magazines to show them was an advertisement was.
My co-teacher and I started off the lesson in the regular manner that we always do, but around 10:00 something rather unusual happened. Two other teachers appeared in the doorway of the classroom and beckoned my co-teacher to go with them. Without hesitation, Mr. Nou turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, I am busy. Can you teach the class?” He did not give me a chance to answer, as he left with the other teachers a few seconds later. Standing in the middle of the class, I turned to the students and asked them to wait for a few moments. I went outside, and noticed that none of the other classrooms had teachers in them. The students were filing out of them, and were walking towards the shed where they park their bicycles. I went back inside the class, and proceeded to teach for the rest of the time remaining. I had the students look at the advertisements I brought in groups, and helped them figure out what their purpose was. When this was concluded, I packed up my things and dismissed the students.
As I walking out of the school, I noticed that all of the teachers were playing soccer. I learned later that the reason why all of the teachers had left their classes was because the school director had left early that day. With no boss around, they decided to abandon their classes in order to go play soccer. I sighed while I watched the teachers kick the ball around. “À la Cambodgien,” I said to myself.
I walked home in a few minutes, and upon entering my room I started boiling water for a cup of tea. I swept and cleaned my room for a little while until my host mother told me that it was time for lunch. The meal was fish soup with rice. With a spoon in my right hand and a fork in my left, I ate the meal in silence with the rest of the family. I poured a helpful of chili sauce on my bowl at one point so the dish could have some flavor. After lunch, the women cleared the dishes and I began reading a copy of the New Yorker that had been sent to my by mail. You, the reader, might think that my manners are poor for not helping the women in their tasks of cooking and cleaning, but I assure you that this is not the case. I have tried many times to help cook, clean the dishes, or some other part of the women’s housework in the kitchen, but my attempts were met with firm rebuttals. I have been shooed out of the kitchen more times than I would like to admit, and I have reluctantly accepted their custom of keeping men out of their designated chores.
After reading for a while, the father of the table came to the table with a large bowl of roasted crickets. The bugs, which are about as big as your little finger, have a taste that resembles popcorn. Altogether they are not all that bad, but I cannot eat them without thinking about what they are. I watched the father as he ate an entire bowl of the little monsters.
The rest of the day was mildly uneventful. I walked over the pagoda and chatted with the monks for a little while, stopped off in a little café to have a glass of iced coffee, and went for a bicycle ride through the countryside. The only hint that indicated that it was Christmas came from something I saw on the television later that evening. On one of the variety shows, there was a singing and dancing troupe that evoked the Christmas spirit as best as a Cambodian person can. Men, dressed in white suits and red vests, and women, in red and white corset-like outfits, were holding poms poms and dancing. They were also singing about something called “crissmah.”
That was how I spent Christmas this year. It is very hard to make a big deal about it when your in the middle of rural southeast Asia, and I’ve tried not to think about it. C’est la vie.
"No thanks, I don't want a Khmer wife."
Tough Questions
Khmer people, I have found, are naturally inquisitive. Many foreigners who live here are surprised by the amount of questions that are put to them on a daily basis. For volunteers living in rural situations, this custom can sometimes feel like a minor inquisition. The family I live with asks me every time I leave the house where I am going, and every time I come back where I have been. Children in the street ask me where I am going, and the women in the market ask me where I am coming from. It is easy to want to shrug these questions off after a long day to people who are close to you, but this is quite rude. Unbeknownst to me until recently, these questions have much more of a significance in rural areas recently afflicted by violence than it does in other parts of Cambodia. When someone asks you, “Where are you going?” it is a way of keeping track of your safety instead of being a nosy question. If a person knows where you are going, then they know where to look if something has happened to you. During the 1980’s and 90’s, it was a way of knowing where one could look for your body if the Khmer Rouge killed you. Family members still ask each other these questions because of that time. This was really hard for me to wrap my head around when I first learned about it. It still boggles my mind a little bit, but I’m gradually learning to accept as a part of behavioral changes I have to make if I am to live in this culture without incident.
These little inquiries also have to do with the way I look. With light brown hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, and clad in white skin, I blend in with the population as well as a dead fish does in a clear glass of water. The local people in the northern edge of the country have never seen foreigners before in their lives, and everyone I meet wants to know who I am and what I am doing here. Fortunately, I am quite prepared for these kinds of situations. I possess in my knowledge two rehearsed speeches in Khmer that I give more often than I would like to admit. The first has to do with who I am, what I am doing here, why I speak Khmer, and how long I am in this country for. Even if someone has a seen a foreigner on TV or interacts with them frequently, few have ever heard one speak their language with near fluency. Most of the ex-pats (we give them the name “sex-pats” because that is what a lot of them unfortunately come here for) cannot speak a word of the language, which makes me and the other Peace Corps volunteers in this country somewhat of a novelty. The second speech has to do with marriage.
The Debate on Marriage
Practically everyone I meet asks me if I am married. From students, teachers, host family members, and strangers I have casually met, it is asked as simply part of making introductions. Like many cultures around the world, marriage is an important part of life. There is a lot of social pressure to get married and to have kids. The reason why is somewhat of mystery to me, but I have a sort of working theory on it. In trying to see marriage from a Khmer perspective it, I have reason to believe that marriage is seen as being the only way of truly being happy. When a person asks you about your marital status, it seems that are inquiring about how happy you are. Think of it as sort of a distant cousin of “how are you?”
The response to this question is that I am not married, and I am not seeking to marry a Khmer girl. I suppose that I do not have explain myself as to why this is so, but I will write that I cannot foresee how on earth this would happen. There are some volunteers who have decided to be involved with Cambodians, and I am not trying to belittle them or their choices in any way. I imagine that it is a really hard relationship to forge in the two years that we are here, and I admire their efforts in trying to make that work. It is particularly tricky for the male volunteers. The staff told us in training that if we were involved with a Khmer girl, we would have to marry her. Any extrication yourself from a Khmer betrothal would be an inexorable offense in the eyes of the Peace Corps, as you would have completely ruined your community reputation. You would be administratively separated (fired) as a result.
While I am happy for the volunteers that have made such a serious commitment, there are a lot of us who would be prefer not to be involved. I personally feel that there would be such a huge cultural barrier, particularly with the threat of marriage looming over our heads, if I were to find myself in such a predicament. The whole thing would be a nightmarish misunderstanding of language, culture, and desire. I also do not see marriage as the ultimate goal of life and key to happiness, as Khmer people see it, and this is extremely hard to communicate. With all these reasons for not wanting to get married in Cambodia, how do I respond to the ineluctable question of whether I want a Khmer wife? The answer is that I have developed over time a series of responses to it that satisfy to some degree the interrogating party.
The first step in answering the question “are you married?” is to know the person that you are talking to. If it is someone who I have just met or do not know very well, I usually try and deflect this with a joke. “Mun toan riup kah té bruah kñom at mean loi té”, I say to them, which means, “I’m not married because I really don’t have any money.” Most people laugh at not being able to afford a wife, and it reduces the seriousness of the question a little. If the person is someone who I know, the answer is a little more difficult. Because marriage is so important, it is rather hard to convince someone here that being young, unmarried, and traveling the world is actually pretty fantastic. It is such a hard thing to explain that there are several steps that I take in the debate that usually prevent the conversation from forcing me to explain this point.
After I tell the first joke, what usually happens is that the person asks me if I want a Khmer wife. There are usually several things that I can say in response to this. I try not to offend Khmer pride by saying that while Khmer women are very beautiful, graceful, and lovely ad infinitum, I am seeking a wife who speaks English. I explain that if my wife does not speak English and I do not speak Khmer, then there will be a riap kah kree-am kram (unhappy marriage). The average response is to say that there are lots of Khmer girls who speak English, but I counter that by saying that their English is simply not good enough. A person clever enough to see through my initial response will say that in two years I will speak Khmer fluently enough to communicate with a Khmer wife; therefore, no knowledge of English is necessary.
Now it is time to bring out the big guns, and I move the discussion to culture. “Wah pah toh ah co kah nee ah” is a phrase that is thrown around a lot, which means “different culture.” I try and explain to them that marriage is much different in America than in Cambodia. In this country, you go on a date with someone three or four times before you marry them. The families are involved in every step of the way, and the process is almost quicker than a shotgun wedding. It leaves no time for hesitation or doubt, and you barely know the person you marry. There are also a lot of other things about Cambodian marriages that I both do not understand and find very bizarre and sinister, but I will not mention these. I try and explain in a five-minute lecture about how in America your wife is your best friend, that there is more equality between the sexes, and at least a dozen other reasons why marriage is so different in my home country. The goal is to lead them through a convoluted and elaborate dance of an explanation that raises many points and offers an equal number of examples. By the end of it, the person listening to me understands that I do not want a Khmer wife. They may not understand the reasons why, but they know I have many of which they do not understand.
This usually does the trick, and afterwards the conversation is free to move onto other subjects.
Khmer people, I have found, are naturally inquisitive. Many foreigners who live here are surprised by the amount of questions that are put to them on a daily basis. For volunteers living in rural situations, this custom can sometimes feel like a minor inquisition. The family I live with asks me every time I leave the house where I am going, and every time I come back where I have been. Children in the street ask me where I am going, and the women in the market ask me where I am coming from. It is easy to want to shrug these questions off after a long day to people who are close to you, but this is quite rude. Unbeknownst to me until recently, these questions have much more of a significance in rural areas recently afflicted by violence than it does in other parts of Cambodia. When someone asks you, “Where are you going?” it is a way of keeping track of your safety instead of being a nosy question. If a person knows where you are going, then they know where to look if something has happened to you. During the 1980’s and 90’s, it was a way of knowing where one could look for your body if the Khmer Rouge killed you. Family members still ask each other these questions because of that time. This was really hard for me to wrap my head around when I first learned about it. It still boggles my mind a little bit, but I’m gradually learning to accept as a part of behavioral changes I have to make if I am to live in this culture without incident.
These little inquiries also have to do with the way I look. With light brown hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, and clad in white skin, I blend in with the population as well as a dead fish does in a clear glass of water. The local people in the northern edge of the country have never seen foreigners before in their lives, and everyone I meet wants to know who I am and what I am doing here. Fortunately, I am quite prepared for these kinds of situations. I possess in my knowledge two rehearsed speeches in Khmer that I give more often than I would like to admit. The first has to do with who I am, what I am doing here, why I speak Khmer, and how long I am in this country for. Even if someone has a seen a foreigner on TV or interacts with them frequently, few have ever heard one speak their language with near fluency. Most of the ex-pats (we give them the name “sex-pats” because that is what a lot of them unfortunately come here for) cannot speak a word of the language, which makes me and the other Peace Corps volunteers in this country somewhat of a novelty. The second speech has to do with marriage.
The Debate on Marriage
Practically everyone I meet asks me if I am married. From students, teachers, host family members, and strangers I have casually met, it is asked as simply part of making introductions. Like many cultures around the world, marriage is an important part of life. There is a lot of social pressure to get married and to have kids. The reason why is somewhat of mystery to me, but I have a sort of working theory on it. In trying to see marriage from a Khmer perspective it, I have reason to believe that marriage is seen as being the only way of truly being happy. When a person asks you about your marital status, it seems that are inquiring about how happy you are. Think of it as sort of a distant cousin of “how are you?”
The response to this question is that I am not married, and I am not seeking to marry a Khmer girl. I suppose that I do not have explain myself as to why this is so, but I will write that I cannot foresee how on earth this would happen. There are some volunteers who have decided to be involved with Cambodians, and I am not trying to belittle them or their choices in any way. I imagine that it is a really hard relationship to forge in the two years that we are here, and I admire their efforts in trying to make that work. It is particularly tricky for the male volunteers. The staff told us in training that if we were involved with a Khmer girl, we would have to marry her. Any extrication yourself from a Khmer betrothal would be an inexorable offense in the eyes of the Peace Corps, as you would have completely ruined your community reputation. You would be administratively separated (fired) as a result.
While I am happy for the volunteers that have made such a serious commitment, there are a lot of us who would be prefer not to be involved. I personally feel that there would be such a huge cultural barrier, particularly with the threat of marriage looming over our heads, if I were to find myself in such a predicament. The whole thing would be a nightmarish misunderstanding of language, culture, and desire. I also do not see marriage as the ultimate goal of life and key to happiness, as Khmer people see it, and this is extremely hard to communicate. With all these reasons for not wanting to get married in Cambodia, how do I respond to the ineluctable question of whether I want a Khmer wife? The answer is that I have developed over time a series of responses to it that satisfy to some degree the interrogating party.
The first step in answering the question “are you married?” is to know the person that you are talking to. If it is someone who I have just met or do not know very well, I usually try and deflect this with a joke. “Mun toan riup kah té bruah kñom at mean loi té”, I say to them, which means, “I’m not married because I really don’t have any money.” Most people laugh at not being able to afford a wife, and it reduces the seriousness of the question a little. If the person is someone who I know, the answer is a little more difficult. Because marriage is so important, it is rather hard to convince someone here that being young, unmarried, and traveling the world is actually pretty fantastic. It is such a hard thing to explain that there are several steps that I take in the debate that usually prevent the conversation from forcing me to explain this point.
After I tell the first joke, what usually happens is that the person asks me if I want a Khmer wife. There are usually several things that I can say in response to this. I try not to offend Khmer pride by saying that while Khmer women are very beautiful, graceful, and lovely ad infinitum, I am seeking a wife who speaks English. I explain that if my wife does not speak English and I do not speak Khmer, then there will be a riap kah kree-am kram (unhappy marriage). The average response is to say that there are lots of Khmer girls who speak English, but I counter that by saying that their English is simply not good enough. A person clever enough to see through my initial response will say that in two years I will speak Khmer fluently enough to communicate with a Khmer wife; therefore, no knowledge of English is necessary.
Now it is time to bring out the big guns, and I move the discussion to culture. “Wah pah toh ah co kah nee ah” is a phrase that is thrown around a lot, which means “different culture.” I try and explain to them that marriage is much different in America than in Cambodia. In this country, you go on a date with someone three or four times before you marry them. The families are involved in every step of the way, and the process is almost quicker than a shotgun wedding. It leaves no time for hesitation or doubt, and you barely know the person you marry. There are also a lot of other things about Cambodian marriages that I both do not understand and find very bizarre and sinister, but I will not mention these. I try and explain in a five-minute lecture about how in America your wife is your best friend, that there is more equality between the sexes, and at least a dozen other reasons why marriage is so different in my home country. The goal is to lead them through a convoluted and elaborate dance of an explanation that raises many points and offers an equal number of examples. By the end of it, the person listening to me understands that I do not want a Khmer wife. They may not understand the reasons why, but they know I have many of which they do not understand.
This usually does the trick, and afterwards the conversation is free to move onto other subjects.
The Assignment So Far Part Two
When I first came to the Anchor district, I was filled with a kind of callow enthusiasm. Having just finished training in Kampong, my head was full of plans about what I could do as an American volunteer in this northern outpost. I arrived at my site ready to take on whatever challenge was in front of me, but I probably would not have been so enthusiastic had I known what I would face. There are countless pieces of vital information that I wish I had known when I arrived. Beginning with the history of the district, I was oblivious in knowing that this community was almost at the end of their first decade of peace in nearly thirty years. I was to discover only later that this current era is the first in a long time in which students do not have to run for shelter when mortar rounds fall on their schools. It is also the first time that the district can offer any kind of higher education than secondary school. It is in this place that a young American volunteer came to teach English, and found himself bewildered by what he saw.
Two months have passed since the day I came here. During this time, I have struggled every day to deal with at least some part of my situation. From teaching, secondary projects, Khmer skills, cultural barriers, the living situation, ants, frightening tropical illnesses, to the very social fabric of the town itself, there are some days when I come home feeling just wiped out from even trying to make any sort of life here. Yet despite all of these hardships, I do believe that this is all completely and utterly worth doing. If it was not, I do not think that I would be here.
Teaching is the reason why I was sent here in the first place, and I think that this is probably the best thing that I can do for the district as a volunteer. It has taken me a long while to figure out what are effective teaching methods, but right now it seems that I seem to be making some headway. Most volunteers come into this country into schools that have students that can read, write, and speak English well by tenth or eleventh grade. As I mentioned in my first report on the assignment here, this is not the case in my district. The student’s abilities in this rural district are really far behind those in more urban areas of Cambodia, and it does not help that their textbooks, the heinous English For Cambodia, is not what they need to be studying.
The problem with the book is that it is designed for students in an urban environment like Phnom Penh or Siem Reap. The subject matter is accessible to students who have fairly easy access to a variety of resources such as dictionaries, the Internet, English books, and foreigners. However, using it to teach the sons and daughters of farmers who lack these resources is an almost futile process. There are entire chapters devoted to learning about airplane travel, the history of London, or Ted’s Favourite Island (with the British spelling). They are bombarded with useless vocabulary such as boarding pass, Hyde Park, and Corsica (Ted’s Favourite Island). I realize that I have not been an English teacher for very long, but it seems to me that a person who cannot answer the question, “What are you doing today?” probably has a bigger problems than not knowing where Corsica is. Combine this with very little grammar and speaking practice, and you have a typical student in Anchor High School.
A favorite teaching episode of mine comes from when Mr. Nou and I were conducting a free writing exercise. There was one question on the board, which read, “Who are you?” The students were given instructions to answer the question in English with responses such as, “My name is Chay Lonn. I live in Daun Sva village, and I have two older sisters,” but they were free to use any vocabulary they wanted. Most of the students were able to do it, and it seemed simple enough. One young man wrote down in his notebook. “My name is (name omitted). I am a minister. I have two younger brothers.” The student had no idea what a minister was. It was just a vocabulary word that meant nothing to him, but he decided he would put down anyway just to have something to put down.
So how do I get around this problem? I have come up with two methods that seem relatively effective. The first thing to do is to not teach using English for Cambodia. I cannot do away with the book completely, due to the POE’s (Provincial Office of Education) regulations, but there are ways in which you can work around it. The classes are divided into two-hour sessions, I have come up with an agreement with my co-teacher to do something different with the first hour of the class. Currently, I am alternating between teaching quick grammar lessons and English comprehension games during this first hour. By doing this, I seem to be making some headway in the student’s English abiltities. It is slow going because the students do not know really how to put English words together correctly, but I see a little bit of improvement so far. It is also useful because I can use the group assignments I give them to go around the classroom and give them individual help.
The second method involves taking that god-awful book English For Cambodia, and coming up with a lesson that makes the material in it remotely accessible. The book is divided into chapters, with three units to a chapter. One unit is supposed to take up the space of an entire lesson, but the section is usually so hard by itself that this does not happen. What I typically end up doing is playing around the comprehension questions at the end of a reading section to make them more understandable, making up some better questions at the end of the lesson that have to do with the vocabulary, or using a particular chapter to teach about something out of the book. For example, some exercises that are too hard by themselves can be used for teaching a grammar lesson. It can be a lot of work, but if you do not do it the class can be very boring and uninteresting for both the teachers and students.
My counterpart, Mr. Nou, does not know how to teach without the book, but he is gradually picking up on some of the techniques I use in the class. I am trying to get him to speak more in English in the class, but he speaks more in Khmer because the students do not understand English very much. There are a lot of moments when the students do not understand the instructions I give them, and he has to explain to them in Khmer what they should be doing. Some of the games and exercises I have introduced seem to be very popular with the students, such as a competitive form of “Telephone,” and I am hoping that Mr. Nou will take some of these games and use them for his classes in the future.
Every once and a while, there a few light hearted moments that help me get through the day. The other day, I was going some vocabulary that Mr. Nou had pulled out from the book in an 11th grade class. I was explaining what an airplane was, and in an effort to explain it I drew a picture of one on the chalkboard. I drew a box, put some wings and propellers on it, and called it an airplane. I am admittedly not the best artist, but for some in the class it looked like something else. One of the boys at the back of the class called out, “Is that a condom?” It was so ridiculous that I could not help but laugh.
I am not worried so much about making an impact in this community because I can already see that happening. I know of one story, which I only learned about recently, where this clearly was the case. During the rainy season, our school was flooded with water from the adjacent and overflowing rice fields. The buildings remained dry, but the students and teachers were forced to walk through wide stretches of water and mud in order to get to class. The first time that the water was very high, many of the teachers did not want to work. The school director was hearing their complaints one morning, when he noticed that I had simply rolled up my pants, took off my socks and shoes, and was wading through the warm and sticky mud to get to class. He then said to the rest of the teachers, “Listen, if that American is going to go teach, then you should go and teach.” This shamed the teachers into going to school, and class was held that day much to every one’s immediate delight or disappointment, depending on how you look at it. Teachers taught, students listened, and life continued on as normal.
Life Outside The Classroom
Other than teaching, there is really not much to do right now. I read a lot, practice the violin, bicycle around the district, and walk through the country. I have a few ideas for secondary projects, but they involve knowing a great deal more of Khmer than I do already. I have a Khmer teacher that I am currently seeing three times a week, and I am hoping that after some time I will be able to do things like start a hygiene and first aid class at the health NGO in the village. Cambodia is a particularly dirty county, and promoting basic cleanliness would probably be a good and feasible project.
I am getting to know the staff at an agricultural NGO in my town named ADRA. I have the idea of possibly working with them to possibly start a garden or some other kind of agricultural project at the school. Most of the kids are probably never going to leave the district, and it would be valuable for them to learn about the different ways they can grow food on their own. The culture here is, arguable, very materialistic. Any attempt to draw their attention away from cell phones, TV’s, computers, or motorcycles and focus it on how they are going to need to feed themselves and their country in the next ten years is probably a good one.
Life continues on here…
Two months have passed since the day I came here. During this time, I have struggled every day to deal with at least some part of my situation. From teaching, secondary projects, Khmer skills, cultural barriers, the living situation, ants, frightening tropical illnesses, to the very social fabric of the town itself, there are some days when I come home feeling just wiped out from even trying to make any sort of life here. Yet despite all of these hardships, I do believe that this is all completely and utterly worth doing. If it was not, I do not think that I would be here.
Teaching is the reason why I was sent here in the first place, and I think that this is probably the best thing that I can do for the district as a volunteer. It has taken me a long while to figure out what are effective teaching methods, but right now it seems that I seem to be making some headway. Most volunteers come into this country into schools that have students that can read, write, and speak English well by tenth or eleventh grade. As I mentioned in my first report on the assignment here, this is not the case in my district. The student’s abilities in this rural district are really far behind those in more urban areas of Cambodia, and it does not help that their textbooks, the heinous English For Cambodia, is not what they need to be studying.
The problem with the book is that it is designed for students in an urban environment like Phnom Penh or Siem Reap. The subject matter is accessible to students who have fairly easy access to a variety of resources such as dictionaries, the Internet, English books, and foreigners. However, using it to teach the sons and daughters of farmers who lack these resources is an almost futile process. There are entire chapters devoted to learning about airplane travel, the history of London, or Ted’s Favourite Island (with the British spelling). They are bombarded with useless vocabulary such as boarding pass, Hyde Park, and Corsica (Ted’s Favourite Island). I realize that I have not been an English teacher for very long, but it seems to me that a person who cannot answer the question, “What are you doing today?” probably has a bigger problems than not knowing where Corsica is. Combine this with very little grammar and speaking practice, and you have a typical student in Anchor High School.
A favorite teaching episode of mine comes from when Mr. Nou and I were conducting a free writing exercise. There was one question on the board, which read, “Who are you?” The students were given instructions to answer the question in English with responses such as, “My name is Chay Lonn. I live in Daun Sva village, and I have two older sisters,” but they were free to use any vocabulary they wanted. Most of the students were able to do it, and it seemed simple enough. One young man wrote down in his notebook. “My name is (name omitted). I am a minister. I have two younger brothers.” The student had no idea what a minister was. It was just a vocabulary word that meant nothing to him, but he decided he would put down anyway just to have something to put down.
So how do I get around this problem? I have come up with two methods that seem relatively effective. The first thing to do is to not teach using English for Cambodia. I cannot do away with the book completely, due to the POE’s (Provincial Office of Education) regulations, but there are ways in which you can work around it. The classes are divided into two-hour sessions, I have come up with an agreement with my co-teacher to do something different with the first hour of the class. Currently, I am alternating between teaching quick grammar lessons and English comprehension games during this first hour. By doing this, I seem to be making some headway in the student’s English abiltities. It is slow going because the students do not know really how to put English words together correctly, but I see a little bit of improvement so far. It is also useful because I can use the group assignments I give them to go around the classroom and give them individual help.
The second method involves taking that god-awful book English For Cambodia, and coming up with a lesson that makes the material in it remotely accessible. The book is divided into chapters, with three units to a chapter. One unit is supposed to take up the space of an entire lesson, but the section is usually so hard by itself that this does not happen. What I typically end up doing is playing around the comprehension questions at the end of a reading section to make them more understandable, making up some better questions at the end of the lesson that have to do with the vocabulary, or using a particular chapter to teach about something out of the book. For example, some exercises that are too hard by themselves can be used for teaching a grammar lesson. It can be a lot of work, but if you do not do it the class can be very boring and uninteresting for both the teachers and students.
My counterpart, Mr. Nou, does not know how to teach without the book, but he is gradually picking up on some of the techniques I use in the class. I am trying to get him to speak more in English in the class, but he speaks more in Khmer because the students do not understand English very much. There are a lot of moments when the students do not understand the instructions I give them, and he has to explain to them in Khmer what they should be doing. Some of the games and exercises I have introduced seem to be very popular with the students, such as a competitive form of “Telephone,” and I am hoping that Mr. Nou will take some of these games and use them for his classes in the future.
Every once and a while, there a few light hearted moments that help me get through the day. The other day, I was going some vocabulary that Mr. Nou had pulled out from the book in an 11th grade class. I was explaining what an airplane was, and in an effort to explain it I drew a picture of one on the chalkboard. I drew a box, put some wings and propellers on it, and called it an airplane. I am admittedly not the best artist, but for some in the class it looked like something else. One of the boys at the back of the class called out, “Is that a condom?” It was so ridiculous that I could not help but laugh.
I am not worried so much about making an impact in this community because I can already see that happening. I know of one story, which I only learned about recently, where this clearly was the case. During the rainy season, our school was flooded with water from the adjacent and overflowing rice fields. The buildings remained dry, but the students and teachers were forced to walk through wide stretches of water and mud in order to get to class. The first time that the water was very high, many of the teachers did not want to work. The school director was hearing their complaints one morning, when he noticed that I had simply rolled up my pants, took off my socks and shoes, and was wading through the warm and sticky mud to get to class. He then said to the rest of the teachers, “Listen, if that American is going to go teach, then you should go and teach.” This shamed the teachers into going to school, and class was held that day much to every one’s immediate delight or disappointment, depending on how you look at it. Teachers taught, students listened, and life continued on as normal.
Life Outside The Classroom
Other than teaching, there is really not much to do right now. I read a lot, practice the violin, bicycle around the district, and walk through the country. I have a few ideas for secondary projects, but they involve knowing a great deal more of Khmer than I do already. I have a Khmer teacher that I am currently seeing three times a week, and I am hoping that after some time I will be able to do things like start a hygiene and first aid class at the health NGO in the village. Cambodia is a particularly dirty county, and promoting basic cleanliness would probably be a good and feasible project.
I am getting to know the staff at an agricultural NGO in my town named ADRA. I have the idea of possibly working with them to possibly start a garden or some other kind of agricultural project at the school. Most of the kids are probably never going to leave the district, and it would be valuable for them to learn about the different ways they can grow food on their own. The culture here is, arguable, very materialistic. Any attempt to draw their attention away from cell phones, TV’s, computers, or motorcycles and focus it on how they are going to need to feed themselves and their country in the next ten years is probably a good one.
Life continues on here…
The Desire To be Understood
The old woman selling hardware did
Not have a clue about
What I wanted to
Buy. Yes, I was
Desperate. The word
I wanted did not come when I
Needed it most. “Uhh,”
And frantic pantomime and gesture
I did my best. She looked at me like I was a crazy
Man, Lunatic as I may be I still had to have
What she was selling. A
Thought occurs. Drawing at outline in the dirt
Between us with a stick. After she finally knew what it was,
I sighed and she breathed. Money left my hands and entered
Hers. “Relief” in the eye of the beholder.
How human the two of us
Are.
Not have a clue about
What I wanted to
Buy. Yes, I was
Desperate. The word
I wanted did not come when I
Needed it most. “Uhh,”
And frantic pantomime and gesture
I did my best. She looked at me like I was a crazy
Man, Lunatic as I may be I still had to have
What she was selling. A
Thought occurs. Drawing at outline in the dirt
Between us with a stick. After she finally knew what it was,
I sighed and she breathed. Money left my hands and entered
Hers. “Relief” in the eye of the beholder.
How human the two of us
Are.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Conversations With Monks
Before reading this post, I would ask the viewer of this public diary to do one simple task; expunge from your mind all knowledge of what a monk is or should be. Do not imagine the kind, sagacious, and ascetic man whose life is given for that of a heavenly purpose. Forget everything you know about St. Francis or his order, and let me describe to you what I have seen of their Buddhist cousins in this country.
Monks in this country are ubiquitous. You can see them riding on the back of a motorcycle with their saffron robes wrapped around their heads, or walking through a village as they beg for rice. Their heads are generally shaved, their robes drape over one shoulder, and more than a few of them sport tattoos on their body. Many of the monks who live at the Wat were troublemaking boys at one point in their lives who were sent to the pagoda as a kind of reform school. Many boys decide to stay following their period of reform and become monks. It is a way out of being a rice farmer for the rest of your life, and it is an honorable profession. Excluding the religious ceremonies and festivals that they preside over, they are the caretakers of the temple grounds. They perform maintenance on the buildings, tend to the gardens, and work on the other kinds of arts and crafts that go on there.
On late afternoon strolls through the village, I usually visit the chief monk of the Wat near my home. He stands at about 5’5,’’ has several metal teeth, and carries several cell phones around in a yellow pouch around his waist. His back is covered in burn marks from traditional Cambodian medicine, and he smokes expensive Alain Delon cigarettes. The first time that I met him, I was visiting the Wat for the first time. I arrived with another teacher from the high school, and the two of us went into his office inside a wooden gazebo-like building. We kneeled before him, and touched our heads to the floor three times before sitting down in chairs. From behind his desk, the chief monk smiled at us, smoked a cigarette, and gave me a welcoming speech. While he was speaking, a fish in one of the green water tanks behind him was gnawing viciously at a dead frog. I tried my best not to take it as a bad omen.
On my subsequent trips to the Wat, I have discovered that the chief monk maintains a collection of animals there that include four peacocks, three turkeys, two reptiles of some kind, a very large spotted snake, and an abundance of birds. He even has an enormous bird house, which I have a picture of here.
The man on the left in this photograph, the chief monk, is a jovial character, and some of the conversations we have had are pretty amusing. This is summary of what we talk about in perfectly fluent Khmer.
“Do you have a girlfriend in Cambodia?” he asks me.
“No, do you?”
He laughs. “Are you looking for one in Anchor?”
“Not really. I rather prefer American girls.”
“Really? Cambodian girls are not pretty for you?”
“They are pretty, but American girls can speak English.”
“Some Cambodian girls can speak English.”
“Not in Anchor.” We both laugh.
We talk about the weather, how much he wants to learn English but cannot seem to find the time, and what the students are like in Anchor. We also trade opinions about each other’s digital camera. My Khmer is not good enough to have any more in depth conversations than this with the guy, but I’m hoping it will improve with time.
Thanks to this man, the idea of what a Buddhist monk is or should be has been completely shattered in my head. If the same has not been done to you, then I have a done a poor job in describing this man to you.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
This is Lunch
This is a pretty typical lunch for me. Starting clockwise from the fish, which are eaten with the head, are some fish paste, some spicy fish paste, vegetables with a little bit of pork, and some white noodles. Accompanying this is a cornucopia of rice. It might not look so bad, but I swear some days I eat the food more out of hunger than out of taste.
This Is My Brain On Dengue Fever
Being sick is a miserable experience no matter where you are. Being sick in Cambodia is no different, but some comfort can be found in that the Peace Corps staff here is trained and ready to deal with whatever illness you might have. Medical emergencies are taken very seriously because the kinds of medical threats that we face here on a daily basis are quite serious. I have seen this attention first hand recently, I have recently come down with a case of dengue fever.
The virus that causes this condition is transmitted through mosquito bites, which are unfortunately impossible to avoid. Even though I have gone through a great many precautions to protect myself from the little vampires, there are simply too many of them around to really be one hundred percent safe from their bite. You can hide in your nets and wear as much bug spray as you want, but the mosquitoes will simply bite you when you are toweling off after a shower, or walking to the bathroom in the morning. However, what I have seems to be a mild strain of the virus, which is the reason why I can type this entry. However, the story of what happened to me this week is probably worth putting down in words.
This past weekend I was in Kampong Cham for an in-service language training session with some of the Peace Corps staff from Phnom Penh. On Saturday afternoon, a sudden rash started appearing on my face and neck, which began to spread elsewhere on my body. It was sort of blotchy, which was lightly red and smooth to the touch. It did not itch, but it definitely looked strange. Alarmed by this, I called our Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO). I described my symptoms over the phone to her, and she told me that it was probably an allergic reaction. I took some Benadryl, but the rash did not go away. Later that evening, I began feeling tired and feverish. When I woke up the next morning, the rash had spread to the rest of my body, a hundred degree fever was racking my body, and a splitting headache was pounding nails into the front of my head. I called the PCMO, and she told me to get to Phnom Penh as soon as possible. Since some of the Peace Corps staff was already in Kampong Cham, I hopped into their van on Sunday morning and got a ride into Phnom Penh. Both, the driver of the van, said to me during the ride, "You know when Cambodian people get like that, they just take a cold shower and they're fine. But you Americans, I don't know..."
I persuaded the staff driving the van to bring me to Royal Ratanak Hospital, where I met the PCMO. I waited in the waiting room of the hospital for a few minutes before the PCMO and I met with a US trained Cambodian doctor. Before the meeting, several people moved away me when I sat down. Apparently, I looked that bad. Both the PCMO and the Cambodian doctor examined me, took my blood and urine, and put me into a very comfortable hospital room.
The room where I spent the following two days was the nicest hospital room that I have ever been in. Imagine a room in a very nice luxury hotel, and then put a hospital bed in there. Not only did I have a wide-screen TV, but also a couch, a chair, wooden closet, a microwave, a refrigerator, air conditioning, and my own bathroom. A fresh white towel and a pair of clean scrubs were provided to me every afternoon. The food in the hospital was not very good, but I suppose that that is to be expected of hospitals anywhere in the world. Since Royal Ratanak Hospital is owned by a big hospital complex in Thailand, most of the nurses who I interacted with were Thai instead of Khmer. I tried asking them about the political situation in Thailand right now, but the most I got in response was a laugh and shaking of the head.
Over the last few days, the virus has run its course. The fever dissipated after a day, and the rash seems to have faded by now. The headaches are still there off and on, but they have mostly gone away. What is peculiar about my condition is that what I have seems to be a very “atypical” case of dengue. This is fine by me because I enjoy being anything but typical. This is also good because other cases of dengue can be much worse than what I have. Other people who have had this have told me that the symptoms usually begin a high fever that lasts for several days before getting the rash. The fever that I had did not last for very long, but I did have the headaches that usually accompany the onset of the infection.
Right now I am sitting in the volunteer resource room of the Peace Corps office in Phnom Penh. The PCMO wants to watch me over the next few days to make sure that my condition does not worsen, but since my energy is up I do not think that it will. If it did worsen, then they would have to move me to a larger and more sophisticated medical center where I would undergo blood transfusions. Dengue fever does something to lower both the platelet and white blood cell count in your body, and the only treatment in this case is to have daily blood transfusions. The nearest place where I could have this done is in Bangkok, but since political demonstration in Thailand has closed the main airport they would have to move me to Singapore. I personally would not mind going to Singapore, but perhaps under different circumstances. Also, getting blood transfusions in any third world country is among my worst nightmares.
I really hope it does not come to that, and that I get well soon. I would be upset at my present situation, but getting diseases like this is a risk you take when you sign up for this job. Consider it an unintended consequence of a tropical lifestyle.
The virus that causes this condition is transmitted through mosquito bites, which are unfortunately impossible to avoid. Even though I have gone through a great many precautions to protect myself from the little vampires, there are simply too many of them around to really be one hundred percent safe from their bite. You can hide in your nets and wear as much bug spray as you want, but the mosquitoes will simply bite you when you are toweling off after a shower, or walking to the bathroom in the morning. However, what I have seems to be a mild strain of the virus, which is the reason why I can type this entry. However, the story of what happened to me this week is probably worth putting down in words.
This past weekend I was in Kampong Cham for an in-service language training session with some of the Peace Corps staff from Phnom Penh. On Saturday afternoon, a sudden rash started appearing on my face and neck, which began to spread elsewhere on my body. It was sort of blotchy, which was lightly red and smooth to the touch. It did not itch, but it definitely looked strange. Alarmed by this, I called our Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO). I described my symptoms over the phone to her, and she told me that it was probably an allergic reaction. I took some Benadryl, but the rash did not go away. Later that evening, I began feeling tired and feverish. When I woke up the next morning, the rash had spread to the rest of my body, a hundred degree fever was racking my body, and a splitting headache was pounding nails into the front of my head. I called the PCMO, and she told me to get to Phnom Penh as soon as possible. Since some of the Peace Corps staff was already in Kampong Cham, I hopped into their van on Sunday morning and got a ride into Phnom Penh. Both, the driver of the van, said to me during the ride, "You know when Cambodian people get like that, they just take a cold shower and they're fine. But you Americans, I don't know..."
I persuaded the staff driving the van to bring me to Royal Ratanak Hospital, where I met the PCMO. I waited in the waiting room of the hospital for a few minutes before the PCMO and I met with a US trained Cambodian doctor. Before the meeting, several people moved away me when I sat down. Apparently, I looked that bad. Both the PCMO and the Cambodian doctor examined me, took my blood and urine, and put me into a very comfortable hospital room.
The room where I spent the following two days was the nicest hospital room that I have ever been in. Imagine a room in a very nice luxury hotel, and then put a hospital bed in there. Not only did I have a wide-screen TV, but also a couch, a chair, wooden closet, a microwave, a refrigerator, air conditioning, and my own bathroom. A fresh white towel and a pair of clean scrubs were provided to me every afternoon. The food in the hospital was not very good, but I suppose that that is to be expected of hospitals anywhere in the world. Since Royal Ratanak Hospital is owned by a big hospital complex in Thailand, most of the nurses who I interacted with were Thai instead of Khmer. I tried asking them about the political situation in Thailand right now, but the most I got in response was a laugh and shaking of the head.
Over the last few days, the virus has run its course. The fever dissipated after a day, and the rash seems to have faded by now. The headaches are still there off and on, but they have mostly gone away. What is peculiar about my condition is that what I have seems to be a very “atypical” case of dengue. This is fine by me because I enjoy being anything but typical. This is also good because other cases of dengue can be much worse than what I have. Other people who have had this have told me that the symptoms usually begin a high fever that lasts for several days before getting the rash. The fever that I had did not last for very long, but I did have the headaches that usually accompany the onset of the infection.
Right now I am sitting in the volunteer resource room of the Peace Corps office in Phnom Penh. The PCMO wants to watch me over the next few days to make sure that my condition does not worsen, but since my energy is up I do not think that it will. If it did worsen, then they would have to move me to a larger and more sophisticated medical center where I would undergo blood transfusions. Dengue fever does something to lower both the platelet and white blood cell count in your body, and the only treatment in this case is to have daily blood transfusions. The nearest place where I could have this done is in Bangkok, but since political demonstration in Thailand has closed the main airport they would have to move me to Singapore. I personally would not mind going to Singapore, but perhaps under different circumstances. Also, getting blood transfusions in any third world country is among my worst nightmares.
I really hope it does not come to that, and that I get well soon. I would be upset at my present situation, but getting diseases like this is a risk you take when you sign up for this job. Consider it an unintended consequence of a tropical lifestyle.
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